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Dr. Simmons has lost his grip on reality.

Dr. Simmons, who is the man best known for his hideously terrible arguments he put forward against PZ Myers in their recent debate, is apparently doing a Black Knight. He accuses PZ Myers of a variety of things, such as not paying attention to the points he raised, bearing in mind that Dr. Simmons never raised any points that were actually valid or not easily contradicted. Simmons opined:

Before the recent KKMS (MN radio) debate, Dr. P.Z. Myers blogged on Pharyngula that he would decimate me. Within minutes of the shows conclusion, he blogged that he accomplished his goal, never conceding a single point from an hour long show. It is worth ones while to read his blogs and those that follow as they readily speak to the character of these folks, much moreso than I could ever do. Richard Dawkins was also quick to compliment the professor and add to the feeding frenzy. Again, no concessions. They had their hearing aids turned off before the show even started.

Of course, we should point out at this point that even diehard ID supporters believed that Dr. Simmons came off looking completely clueless and indeed got ‘decimated’ by Dr. Myers. When even your own side believes you performed horribly and not just those opposed to your viewpoint, that probably means you did a terrible job: not that your opponent didn’t listen. Dr. Simmons goes through with another howler about the current state of understanding about whale evolution:

Could it be the five or so fossil pieces from dog-size animals that represent intermediate species between land animals and the quadrillion-cell whale with unexplained tons of blubber, communication skills that span thousands of miles, a windpipe separate from the esophagus (unheard of in land animals), segmental decompression, a heart the size of a Volkswagon, ability to dive thousands of meters deep or eat a krill diet?

Starting off with a factual inaccuracy is not a good way of making a point, clearly demonstrating that Dr. Simmons has never actually bothered to look into whale fossils at all or he would be familiar with many larger transitionals like Basilosaurus, which is around 15 meters in length. If he was trying to demonstrate he learned absolutely nothing from his debate with PZ Myers, he has certainly gone out of his way to prove that. He then adds the standard creationist fallacy of an argument from improbability/argument from incredularity, which is basically him stating that “I cannot see how this evolved, therefore God/Design/whatever”. This isn’t even an argument really and he continues it onto his developmental argument, which again boils down into “I can’t see how you developed, therefore God!!! I R IRREFUTABLE!!” etc. I’m sorry, but that’s not even an argument at all.

I think that the criticism Dr. Simmons suffered from his own side, the hammering he got on air from an opponent that actually knew what they were talking about and the subsequent bizarre post have caused him to lose some of his grip on reality.

Edit: It’s worth noting that Dr. Simmons in his whale rant never actually finishes whatever he was trying to say. He never refutes that there are actually early transitionals in the whale fossil line, he just brings up the point and then goes into a rant about how complex modern whales are (while simultaneously forgetting to address the original mentioning of transitional fossils, fossils he claims don’t exist at all).